Where do we go from here?

There are so many different ways that each of these countries (Cuba and Iran) can go in the future.  Im much more interested in Cuba, so I'll be talking about that the most in this blog.

Cuba:  There are a few ways that Cuba could go.  If it repeated its past history, we would probably see some foreign invader come in soon to take over the country.  After a long time of that country being in rule, Cuba would attempt to kick them out and sever all foreign relations in the process.  They would then have no money, and basically be back where they are today.  That was a bit extreme, but that's kinda whats happened in the past more than once.  Maybe I should start this over and state what position Cuba is in right now and go from there.  Cuba is basically in a very poor economic state, led by an oppressive government, with almost no foreign relations.  They're also in a very bad spot with the United States.  Basically, the US has offered to reconsider the trade embargo under some terms of Cuba, but cuba just completely blew them off.  But I don't know enough about this topic to give any more information.  But I see a few realistic options for Cuba's near future.  Either they stay the way they are and continue to spiral down into economic depression, they make more foreign relations and stimulate their economy by trading whatever it is that they have, or they could just completely lighten up and do things like letting people start their own businesses and stuff.  I mean, they've done a little of that, but from some of the videos that we've watched in class, it looks like a long and tedious process that makes you really have to want to open up your own business.  If it were up to me, this is the choice that I would do.  I would give them most or all of the freedoms that Americans have including property rights, speech rights, and even some of the things that we don't think about as much like running businesses and being able to buy stuff.

One More Assassination Plot

Read the documents assigned to you. For your assigned document, complete the following three tasks: 1. Summarize the document.


Cuban exiles are trying to assassinate Fidel Castro any way that they possibly can. It's intense. They said "The plan was to kill him any way we could - explosives on the road, grenades in a meeting, shots on the street. We would have strangled him if we had to."


Article mainly addresses the different assassination plots on Castro organized by a man named Pasado. Apparently, he's organized a ton of different attempts but is always in the wrong place at the wrong time.
2. Explain what issues in the Special Period this document deals with.
It provided issues to Castro, obviously. Because, I mean, this guy is trying to kill him. It addresses the extreme dislike of the country's leader (at least by some people) and frequently accentuates the CIA involvement on many of his planned attacks.
3. Answer: In what way(s) does this document help us better understand Cuba during this time period?


It gives us (the reader) a better understanding of the US's involvement in cuba at the time. It makes the reader realize how many times Fidel Castro has almost died -- all of them from attempted assassinations. Interestingly, Fidel didn't/doesn't seem too worried about it. I would be, that's for sure.

People Leaving Cuba (Real)

Sorry about that. Anyway, it all started on accident when two Peruvian guards shot each other. It caused a major commotion and Fidel Castro was basically like "they can handle it themselves" and didn't even send police over. People then flooded the embassy asking for asylum. Fidel then said that anybody who wanted to leave could leave. The Cubans in key west took advantage of this and sent a huge number of boats over to the coast near Havana. An insane number of people left over the course of around 6 months (I don't remember the exact number but it was around 125,000 which was like 2% of their population at the time). That's a lot.

People Leaving Cuba

Today in class, we talked about an event in Cuba in ____ that was very interesting. It all started basically on accident when a guard of a very manly super soldier came over and punched Socrates in the face. He totally had it coming, too. Do you think that sometimes I eat fifteen apples in one sitting? Trick question. I did it standing up. Love, Willem. PS) Ian shouldn't let other people write his blog posts.

Character Bio Reflection

As you may remember from my most recent blog, In class we've been doing an activity in which we are assigned a character who has their own views and opinions.  We read a document on the ideas of Reza Shah and formed opinions about it based on our character's economic status, governmental views, and religious influence.  I was a 40 year old woman who was very poor.  I was also recently introduced to the works of Ayatollah Khomeini.

But it was only one half of the class who was assigned a character.  The other half was assigned a governmental position -- either Socialist, Democratic, or Religious.  Their job was to give an initial speech stating their opinions as the leaders of the parties, then to walk around the class trying to influence individuals to vote for their party.  Being a different character was very fun.  It allowed me to interpret my own views and to make logical decisions based on them.  For me, democracy was out of question right from the start because of my economic situation.  Switching to a democracy wouldn't give me the money that I needed.  And even if it DID, that wasn't their first priority as a government.  It was then up between socialist and religious.  I weighed the options and listened to both parties' representatives speeches.  They both had very good reasons for me to vote for them.  Religious promised a good, fruitful life and an even better afterlife.  But I was a bit skeptical.  I wasn't fully religious, just interested.  The socialist group promised me equal wealth and the same life as everybody else.  It wasn't as good a life as the religious party promised, but at least it was tangible.  After weighing them for quite a while, I decided to go with the socialist group.

I thought that this was a really fun activity that incorporated our own interpretations of history and its effect on every day people.  We're too young to vote right now, but this exercise made me realize how fuzzy the line is between different parties and how there are good and bad parts to every argument.

Character Bio

I am a thirty-nine-year-old woman who moved to Tehran a while back because my husband was a farmer and he couldn't make a profit on what he was doing so we had to sell the farm and move into the city.  We have to live in the slums because his income is too low for us to live in a nice part of town.  Even so, I like the city better than I do the countryside.  My husband occasionally brings me recordings of sermons by Ayatollah Khomeini and other anti-government people.  I presume that I have turned anti-government because of these and because of my economic status versus other people in the country.  Naturally, If I am poor, I am going to blame it on somebody else -- most likely the country's leader.  The government affects me in a number of ways.

1.  I am poor -- this is probably because of something that the government did.
2.  I am a woman -- society (and therefore the government) prevent me from doing anything substantial with my life.
3.  I don't/can't have a job.  This might be because all of the jobs are taken away to put more people into the oil industry and away from the other thing that our country naturally provides (which isn't much)
4.  I am probably constantly harassed by the SAVAK because of my economic status.  They probably take a bunch of my stuff and mess it up.

Operation Carlota

In the early 60's, cuba had an interesting foreign policy which angered the United States.  It was to  "promote socialist revolutions around the world."  Basically, wherever there was a country in need, Cuba would be there to help them up and guide them on the road to communism.  Cuban communism, that is -- which is different from other types of communism like USSR communism.  Cuban communism focused more on the rural aspects of life rather than the urban ones.  I don't really know any more details on that subject though.

Anyway, in class we focused on one aspect of this in the early 60's called Operation Carlota that was particularly prominent  in history.  Operation Carlota took place in Angola, a country in Africa.  They had just overcome been granted their independence and had absolutely no government left behind.  Cuba saw this as the perfect opportunity to take Angola "under its wing".  Cuba's main goal in invading Angola was to have the country follow in the footsteps of Cuba's government and to continue to spread communism throughout the world.  They thought that Africa would be a good place to start, I guess.